Our trip to San Francisco was coincidentally during Pride 2010! Over the ten days we spent in the bay area, I had quite the range of experiences, mostly too exhausting to write about in any detail right now. Zoo, Alcatraz, random joints, aquarium, fun sex, open container citation, bums, DANCING, bartering, record stores, clubs, girlsgirlsgirls, boysboysboys, Diggnation, free alcohol, DRIVING, ice machines, missing my beautiful animals and my beautiful keyboard. If nothing else the trip served to remind me of who I am and whom I’d rather be. Pure inspiration, even the shitty parts.

I am still broke but yoga and meditation are free.

Now I realize that I’ve been doing it all wrong, this battle with my brain. It’s not about rewarding myself when I resist something I want to resist, especially when the the reward is another negative thing to my body. The reward is in the resistance itself.

I started a bit of a body detox today. Nearly two weeks of drinking and eating junk non stop while on vacation in San Francisco has taken it’s toll. I’ll still be drinking, likely, but I’m pairing my unabashed alcoholism will all other things healthy. I haven’t smoked more than five cigarettes in the last five weeks, though I did go through a few cheap cigars and the green smoke will never stop entering my lungs. Today
I have begun consuming large quantities of green tea with fresh blueberries and lemons smashed into it. This week I will only be eating things that are real food, nothing processed and very few carbs. Carrots, cucumbers, mushrooms, bananas, pineapple, lemons, strawberries, blueberries, beans and such. Doubtless, this attention to my body and mind will pay off.

Monday night was nice, back in the comfortable world of drunken friends. Tuesday night was even more lovely at Laura’s eviction party: drink, snort, dance, sing, talk, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY, police, sprinklers, jumping balconies, hiding in closets and under beds, huge pupils. Ah, how ordinary in our lives but still so refreshing! We must create, oh you beautiful humans, this is our world.

Today is the day.
The beginning.
I have a lot of work to do, to become this person that I’ve been harboring within myself for years now. I will become what I want, I will change my name, I will adventure and love and live. My motivation has never been more grounded, my determination has never been more powerful. In a way, I am bringing each one of you with me.

I spend a lot of time trying to explain the inconvenience of desk perching to Sean Connery the cat. He walks on the keyboard, bats at the mouse, leaves awkward comments on Facebook and impairs my view of the monitor. I have to commend his persistence, though, because no matter how many times I pick him up and relocate his fuzzy orange kitty body he always eventually returns to his favoured position, rubbing my face with his while big fat purs rumble in his chest. He head butts my hand as it tries to click on things and gets eye juice all over my fingers. God damn adorable little fucking bastard!

You know when you wake up with a pounding head, smelling like sweat with quarters stuck to your tits that you had a good night. If my life were a movie, which scenes from a Wednesday night adventure would make the final cut? :

[couch in a bar]
her: You’re drunk, I feel like I’m taking advantage of you.
me: Well…I’m on top, so that has to count for something.

I’ll have to take a break from being a great American party girl for a day or so considering the lack of funds, booze and patrons. My depression hates me for it, but my body is thankful. It seems today I will have to get creative and dig up some distractions that do not depend so heavily on the voluntary ingestion of poisons.

As visually based as I consider myself to be, I always find it more efficient to express my innards through words. The impact and clarity they lend really makes me feel my message is being relayed with the ever present possibility of reader by reader interpretation. Visual art, of course, contains the same properties but I find little finesse in my abilities there. I tend to combine the two and litter the world with confusing, not-quite-art pieces. It frustrates me a lot of the time, I just want to create something more subtle that lets the viewer really soak an image in without having their feelings interrupted by direct captions on the work itself. I want the words without the letters, I guess that’s what fashion is for.

I wonder if civilization will eventually build up higher and higher until it collapses in on itself and burns to a crisp. I kind of hope so and I hope I’m here when it goes down. I want to be a piece of the reconstruction, a bard and a trader because this isn’t working and we need something different! There is a pile of books that I haven’t picked up in a few years and I think I’ll be reading Anthem this week just to encourage my little bits of (unwillingly) sober social revolution.

Spitting is a terrible habit that has a strangely huge impact on my life sometimes. I spit constantly and I realize a lot of innocent bystanders find it to be rather disgusting. I don’t do it on purpose! I just have to get that crap out of my body or something. The other day I began to wonder what my face must look like while I use the power of internal suction to gather up all the phlegm in the throat. Not the most appealing images…

The bus stop outside of my work is on a busy street right in front of a gym. While waiting to pull into traffic I watched the shoulders of a welled toned, tanned, middle-aged woman flex and ripple as they worked smoothly to lift a water bottle to her lips and suck its contents down. I could feel the smoke from my cig burn my eyes as the cookies (later to be joined by tequila) settled in the pit of my stomach and the THC cuddled my blood stream. Here I was at 21-years spitting blood and chunky mucus into gravel while someone twice my age was in her physical prime just yards away, it’s almost enough to make a girl feel guilty like I’m not living this existence to the fullest. My overactive imagination corrected this for me: her clear, alert eyes detected an opening in the rush hour rat race and she turned into the street.

BAM! A truck, a crash, a split second.I was breathing still, she was not.I win.

If we’re gonna die, we’re gonna die (from our own arrogance) so we may as well take our time.

The neighbours beat on our shared wall and I can feel the negativity of their message vibrating through the sheet rock. I smile and put my guitar down, seal my lips. My apologies, I hadn’t noticed the time. It’s just past midnight now.

A smokey room and I’ve been living music for the last few hours. The smell of this apartment is a cry for attention from the various bits of trash and unknown things hiding about. Begging to be cleaned with pure vigor, I should leave no single place untouched. Suppose I clean out my hard drives too, put everything in the proper folder; my world would change quite completely, and to a benefit.

I can hear the innards of this old machine working hard to download five movies at once. The poor thing is on the outs and I’m just resisting an upgrade. Today quite easily managed to be interesting and blissful in it’s own sure way. My fingers ache just the right amount, my ipod is charged, and I’m deeply infatuated with a certain Pringle of Scotland pre-fall 2010 sweater look. Life is good.

My mouth tastes weird from chewing stems.
My head is still trying to escape the confusion of all the alcohol I’ve consumed.
But the wheels are turning. Happiness sparkles around me.

The last few weeks have been some sort of blissfully terrific new reality.
We’re always teetering on the edge of addiction and death and despair and I sort of love it.
Like surviving makes an ordinary life wither and pale in compairison.
The best way to understand how good it can get is to experience how bad it can get.
Or something.

I sold my Macbook for a disgustingly low price the other night out of desperation. I miss it already, some day I must have another. I crammed all the garage band files onto my external hard drive. That baby is full full full, I need a new one. So much data. My mouth waters with the knowledge of possessing it.

I’ve been receiving too much flattery in the previous 48 hours. My head is swollen with egotistical delight and I quite enjoy it. These speakers are BLOWN. There is so much to be said, I’ll just begin again tomorrow.

I’ve always been fond of beetles. When I was a child living in Canada I remember riding home from a family day at the lake. My younger brother and I would have water beetles stowed away in little containers of water, vowing to care for them. The little guys would swim about, dive and swirl, sit delicate on the surface. We never did find out what they ate, though. I regret our failure to keep them living. [sad]

My desk is a mess.

Something big happened today. Upon waking I instantly felt the need for some variety of drastic change. Considering the few things I have control of, the task of drama fell to my hair. For two and a half years I have adored my dreadlocks. Warm, beautiful, original. As I thought of cutting them off, my heart beat faster and I understood that too much of my identity was wrapped in them. I like being the weird girl. The girl on the bus that people look at and wonder what sort of interesting things must be floating about my mind. I should be able to be her without looking the part. So I chopped them off.

It took several hours, metal combs and a lot of oil. I wanted to salvage as much length as possible so I would have some room to play with what’s left. NORMAL HAIR. I will be getting it cut tomorrow, professionally. I’m thinking very short. My ears are so cold, but I haven’t had a heavy headache all day and everything feels light and silly. The reactions of my roommates were minimal, barely existent. Good.

At this point in the day the roof of my mouth burned. It had been cut to hell by the dollar frozen pizza I had eaten for dinner. Eating canned pineapple rings for dessert probably wasn’t a good choice. The citrusy goodness stung at my open wounds. Totally worth it. I love canned fruits and vegetables. I’m not sure why that is, maybe it’s because I’m always so broke. More likely it’s because they’re are so convenient, stackable, easily controlled and the variety is stimulating.

A rather exciting prospect presented itself to me yesterday. It’s keeping me motivated and thriving. Something to work toward. Lauren and I will have a life of muffins, smoke and art. Fashion and like minds. This seems to be exactly what I need. The potential for symbiosis exhilarates me.

Today, I appreciate everything.
My morning, afternoon and evening have lacked fashion. I will remedy that now, I’ve got to get sewing. I sent out more resumes today. I think something good will come along soon. Maybe something cool, where I get to dress nice. I’d love to be an office assistant, or something along those lines. The new hair will help me get there. God damn, it’s cold. Bundle up!

At times, I wonder.
This afternoon was one of those times; using a dirty towel to soak up the urine left on the bathroom floor by the other. My poor socks, at least they were on sale. I wonder if this is right, if this is okay, how long can I continue. I’m only twenty years old, I cannot even legally be an alcoholic yet. This hasn’t managed to dissuade me. [sigh]

The theme of last night’s party was the 1980s. The mix was great, the spandex was better; it was a fun group of people. Where we live (in an apartment) the neighbor’s don’t call the cops. I hate this place some times, but I do not want to leave. I may have no choice, though, if I don’t find a job soon. Very soon, T minus 3 weeks, MAX. I should be trying harder. Part of me wants to start over, be alone, snow and smallness. Then again, NO.

At last resort, the place I’d have to move to is Sandpoint, Idaho. I grew up there. It is a stunning place; the lake, the mountain. I could snowboard all winter, boat all summer. My family is close to there, but not my friends. I don’t even think I could get decent internet. I’m terrified that a move there will leave me feeling depressed and isolated. In the same way though, I would have a nice house to myself, I could focus on building my character. I could go mountain biking, run the trails everyday, adventures in the woods. But I wouldn’t. My mind keeps swaying. I am frustrated beyond belief with the pressure of decision and time is running out.

I’ve been sewing a lot, at least.

Let’s go on an adventure, shall we?

I’ll leave you on a note of slight sadness.
Though, the resin collected was impressive:

The things that happened last night somehow managed to skew my immediate perception of the world and I do not like it. In the same moments I realized I need to return to my double daily doses of yoga. A deep sigh here. A distraction there.

When I woke up this morning my roommates were watching Doctor Strangelove. It made me giggle internally because the last time I saw the film I was living in Spokane, it was a Sunday afternoon. My old guitarist and I were sitting on the front porch of my broken down apartment building practicing our punk set acoustic style because the rest of the band was out of town. A neighbour came walking across the street without any shoes and we felt sure he would be coming to tell us to keep it down. Instead he told us that he had a mini studio in his apartment and invited us over. Turns out he did music scores for IFC and upon walking in we saw a beautiful set up of iMacs and audio equipment. We played a few of our songs for him, he was encouraging and told us that back in the 70s he was really into the then new onset of this thing called punk rock. He couldn’t have been more right; when getting up to use the bathroom (having to to avoid several cats) I noticed a gold record on the wall. To my great surprise, it was for an album in 1978 by The Skulls. I immediately questioned his possession of it, and to the great delight we found that we had just smoked [out of a small bronzed Coca Cola bubbler] with a teeny tiny little piece of history. Then we watched Doctor Strangelove and walked back home in a haze induced by both drugs and awe. I had completely forgotten about this experience until now. Wow.

I’ll be the first to admit it: I am a crazy cat lady. The big orange one is Sean Connery.
There are two others; MacGruber and Isotope. At some point last night I awoke to find two cats silhouetted in the window. Isotope was licking Sean Connery’s face.

Yesterday the weather was beautifully deceptive. Sunny and bright and glowing from my window; when I stepped outside my face froze instantly. Bicycling in that temperature was wholly uncomfortable even with the layers I was wearing. The majority of my day was spent standing in lines. At the Department of Licensing, at the bank, at the cable company, at the court house. Lines are terrible for one main reason; everyone in a line is in a bad mood. Impatient, angry, annoyed- it’s pure negative vibes! A very draining way to exist on a Wednesday afternoon.

The light part of the day was ending and I quite randomly decided to do something uncharacteristic.

It’s a foggy Monday morning and I manage to look pretty scummy as I walk home from a night of exorcism and stoner movies at my guitarist’s place. I’m unusually well rested because his couch is the squishy kind of comfortable and Molly Danger the Chihuahua makes a wonderful cuddle buddy.

I can hear what’s left of last night sloshing around in my bag, the bottle is a little too big and pokes out the top; the epitome of class. I can feel my kidneys hating me for forgetting to take my antibiotics last night, I suppose the rum didn’t help either. Most of the leaves are gone from the tree branches by now and it makes me desperately wish for something less deciduous, maybe some mountains while we’re at it. I’m homesick.

Feeling strange right now: not bad, but not really good. Then I realize there’s a word for that , I say “melancholy” out loud; it starts to rain big fat MELANCHOLY drops. I suppose I set myself up for that one. Thanks to the pauses in my thoughts, semi-colons are my new best friend. Though I really cannot be that pensive, I have a tightly wound ball of excitement in my bones and I know it’s just a matter of hours before it all bursts forth, today will a good kind of interesting to say the least.

Usually I have Mondays off. Right now I have every day off.

My puppy should have had his morning walk hours ago, I feel guilty, but when I walk in the door he isn’t mad, just excited that I’m home now. Animals are impressive, they focus on the good and let all the bad shit just roll on by. I’m almost out of cat food, fully out of money. I will be job hunting today in an attempt to remedy my lack of income, but while I wait for invitations to interviews I’ll focus on sewing. I’ve fallen in love with a new, more personal design aesthetic in the last few days and should be taking photos tomorrow with Lauren. A very fun model who I am delighted to be working with. Good things this way come. I want to start a video cast to give my clothing label a more connected point of view, I’ll make the first one this week. High hopes!